4:05am
The windows are open, hoping to capture the faint winds and convert them into a mythical cooling cross-breeze. A gust passes through vacuuming all the doors shut, cancelling hope for a miracle.
I’m awake. It’s cool but I’m on top of the covers and not cool enough.
The plastic thump-thump-thump of the oscillating fan reaching the end of its arc is rhythmic yet not. After three-to-six attempts, it yields to the resistance and heads the other way. It will be back soon.
Another fan in the room sounds like a far off propeller plane looping around the property. I await its arrival at each approach.
The alleyway ebbs and flows throughout the night with the smell of marijuana smoke, teens cussing, and the clinking of bottles as passers-by rummage through recycling bins.
There’s a sick child in the other room. My child. Been sick for days, poor thing. On antibiotics now. Spit the first dose on the floor because she didn’t like the taste.
I can hear her labored breath as different subconscious systems battle for what they deem as comfortable. Warm, yet shivering. Cold, yet burning up. Asleep, yet aware.
My wife is there next to her. Also sick with a persistent unspecified cough.
Since arriving at the rental three days ago, I have only left the house to buy medicine and wine.

7:23am
Scuttling in the alleyway. Two voices. A truck starts. A woman pleads, “I’m sorry, I fucked up.” The truck drives off.
I put on a pot of coffee.

9:15am
Left the rental to walk and pick up breakfast. Peeked at the ocean to remind myself of the magnitude. I’m a block away but hadn’t seen it in days.
I got a breakfast burrito. The potatoes were a little al dente, but it had black beans and wasn’t a soupy mess so I call that a win.
PCR tests came back and it’s not Covid and it’s not strep, but we don’t have any answer for what sickness(es?) our family is dealing with.
I’m on vacation but it’s not quite vacation anymore.
I’m working a bit. Dysfunctional but I appreciate a place to channel anxiety.
Caretaking is much harder than computer work.

4:46pm
We made it to the beach. Wife and son thought it was too windy for my solar shade —and it was— but I persevered. After naysaying me they had the audacity to want to join me in my solar fortress. Haha. Nice try.
My congested little one made me pretend food with wet sand. She’s allowed to join me in my fortress.
We left as the tide came in and ordered pizza. The pizza was just okay.

9:44pm
A good day. A long day.
Another member of the family is reporting a sore throat, so that’s less than ideal.
“When this vacation is over I’m going to need another vacation,” the protagonist says looking directly through the fourth wall. The canned laughter erupts.
Do wells of rage fill up faster than waters of peace? Am I broken or is the underlying system broken?

5:32am
Awakened by two crows squawking at each other.
I went to bed after midnight. A new day begins.

The algorithm sucked me into another model craft hobby: Mini 4WD racing (ミニ四駆). A Mini 4WD is a 1:32 scale model that is a mix between slot cars and RC cars. You don’t control these cars with a remote control nor do they drive in an electrified slot, rather you place your racecar in a plastic track with high walls and send them speeding down the track at ~40km/h.

The twist is you don’t know what the track looks like until race day, so you have to be ready to adapt. There might a big jump, moguls, or a tall mountain to climb. Once racers have seen the course, they have some time to make adjustments by balancing engineering choices about weight, power, braking, handling, batteries, downforce, and more. Are you going to make your car lighter and full send it over the tabletops? Or is slow and steady going to win the race? The races are a brief cacophony of slapping plastic and whirring motors but I can feel the electricity of the room through the screen.

Where YouTube hooked me was watching custom 4WD Mini builders like アズパカ, にわから, and ユウタ. They are hellbent on making their cars as fast as possible. In Japanese they call it “タイムアタック” (“Time Attack”). For their time attacks, they use the Japan Cup Junior Circuit (JCJC) course; a three lane track with a wave feature and a wicked lane change from the inner lane to the outer lane that will send light or fast cars flying off the course. The standardized course (and video format¹) is where the similarities stop because their cars are anything but conventional.

The videos are all about iteration and experimentation. Testing all kinds of parts and gimmicks like 3D printed chassis, side rollers, battery types, motors, wheels, and downforce options. Sometimes the tweaks are small, sometimes they are radical innovations:

• An entirely “blade” flat chassis
• A chassis with all the weight to one side
• A bendy chassis to bend around corners.
• A chassis with a motor on each wheel
• A chassis with a computer fan in the middle
• A car with knives
• A dual-fan chassis that looks like a GPU.
• A car with model rocket engines!? Why not.

That sort of raw, no-rules experimentation is refreshing to watch. It looks like dumb fun. A reason to own a 3D printer. They experiments don’t always work and will fail spectacularly, but lessons get learned. And if you watch enough videos, you see them getting faster.

• A stock car will complete all three laps in about 5 seconds.
• Cars they made a year ago will go around in 3 seconds.
• Cars they made six months ago, 2 seconds.
• A car from one month ago, 1.63 seconds.

I’m not sure why Mini 4WD strikes such a chord with me. It could be nostalgia for my RC car days as a ten year old. It could be my penchant for Japanese model making. But I probably know what hooks me the most: this is the flavor of engineering optimization work I like to do. Make it lighter, faster, and able to handle bumps in the road. Websites are of course vastly different than mechanical engineering… but the correlation between weight and speed are enough to activate my brain.

So I bought a Mini 4WD Starter Pack (and one for my son) to close the loop on my curiosity. They’re only ~$20, so why not. The hitch in the plan is that a beginner track costs $120. It would nice to have an opportunity to run around a complex track without an upfront cost. My hobby shop used to host races and have a track in-store before COVID, but not anymore. Maybe I can provide this as a service to my kids’ friends… yeah… that’s a good justification.

The cicadas hum their ancient alien tune in the treetops above. The asphalt is hot to the touch. Cars and homes fill with the white noise of air conditioning in attempts to keep those inside alive. My enemy, the Sun, beams its photonic radiation at me –only me– and mocks my every step and sows humiliation as sweat pours down my back to pool betwixt my buttocks. We trudge through hot air to make due with our curse.

I started a new job. We went on a trip. Saw Mount Rushmore. Saw Austin FC win. School ended. Sports are over but a new –more committed– cheer season is already underway. Swim team ends today and I will not miss those steaming hot Saturday mornings, but will miss the thrill of seeing my kids continuously improve and rack up personal bests. My son returned from sleep away camp. And we’re all looking forward to a proper vacation soon.

Newly employed at Microsoft

At the beginning of May I started my new job at Microsoft. It’s already been nearly two months and I think I’m adjusting nicely to corporate life. Thankfully, the immediate group I work with has tons of nice and talented people so that makes it easy to feel welcome.

My plate of responsibilities is still being assembled but the bulk of my work thus far has been refactoring some web components. Web components are pretty fast out of the box (look, ma! free lifecycle and reactivity code!) but we’re working to make our components be super fast. While the scope of what I do is a fraction of my previous agency and startup life, it’s nice to be able to focus on isolated components.

I lost my publish button

It took me awhile to pinpoint this feeling but the biggest change since joining a large corporation is that I’ve lost my publish button. There’s probably ten people between me and code going to production. Gone are the days of making ten deploys a day. Gone are the days of yeeting a blog post on the company blog. Gone are the days of ssh’ing into a box to make some hot fixes. It’s for good reasons, of course.

My personal publish button usage has also declined during this time. I blame onboarding to a new job, busy summers, and a small RSI flare up. But I’m not cooking drafts up like I used to either. I intentionally didn’t install Notion on my work machine to prevent distractions and so far that plan has worked. All is not lost, I burned some midnight oil last night and summoned a small quiver of drafts and I think shorter posts will lead the way.

The no deodorant challenge

I tried that hippie myth where you don’t use deodorant for two weeks and your body naturally adjusts and your armpits don’t smell bad…

…this did not work. It very much did not work. I’m sorry.

A nephew’s graduation in South Dakota

Four days into my new job I took some time off to travel to South Dakota. My nephew graduated as valedictorian of his small high school in Hill City, SD. The kid has a lot going for him; a National Merit Scholar, cross country state champion, Gatorade’s 2024 Cross Country Player of the Year for South Dakota, a volunteer fire fighter, among other great qualities that he’ll bring with him to MIT in the fall.

My nephew’s high school has the unique honor of being able to have their graduation at Mount Rushmore (his high school is also the only school that can have Smokey the Bear as a mascot, but that’s another story). It’s a dramatic event to see kids transition into their future under the long gazes of those gargantuan stone presidents. It’s not often you get to attend an event like that and I’m glad our kids got to be there for it.

Great to see family. We don’t have occasion to get everyone together often, so I’m glad I had the chance to yuck it up with my brother, nephews, cousins, in-laws, aunts, and uncles. Kids and adults played wiffle ball in the yard and we rode minibikes around the field. A good short trip to the Black Hills, we should do it more often.

🧠 Learning

Most of my learning brain cells have gone towards learning how to do my new job. I think that’s okay.

📖 Reading

I came across some great books since the last vibe check. I might actually do full posts for some of them… they were that good.

Finished

• Solaris by Stanisław Lem - The audiobook from my library was a radio adaptation and I think I need to read the actual book.
• Your Brain on Art by Susan Magsamen & Ivy Ross - This book will change your behavior and how you spend your time.
• The Communist Manifesto by Marx & Engles - Never actually read this until now. I don’t fully agree with them –particularly that Communism requires revolution because history shows that creates a power vacuum to fill with corruption– but the boys in red make some good points about Capitalism.
• How Big Things Get Done by Flyvbjerg & Gardner - My favorite book of the year so far. Validates a lot of what I talk about in regards to prototyping.
• The Country of the Blind by Andrew Leland – Columnist Andrew Leland has a degenerative eye condition and is going blind… is blind but not yet blind and unsure about claiming his blindness. An honest account of a slow but serious life change, breaking apart a lot of the misconceptions we as society hold about blindness.
• A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan - I knew the KKK was a Southern thing, but did you know there was a large KKK presence in the North as well? This book tells about the rise of D.C. Stephenson, a Grand Dragon who rose to power and held a tight grip on the state of Indiana and the midwest. His rule would have continued if not for his perversion and one woman –Madge Oberholtzer– who revealed who his true character in her death and destroyed the clan’s presence in the state. I mean this without hyperbole, I felt like I was reading the story of Steve Bannon or Donald Trump. Horrific people who abuse fears to enrich themselves and exert their shitty brand of authoritarianism.
• The Art of Small Talk by Casey Wilson & Jessica St. Clair (Spotify) – A riotous look at how small talk benefits our lives. I nodded along the whole way until the penultimate chapter where it gets spiritual and talks about hairdressers speaking prophecies over people… other than that, great!

Started

• Like, Comment, Subscribe by Mark Bergen
• A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

📝 Blogging

A small handful of blog posts since the last update but the quality has never been higher.

• A quick light-dark() experiment - I love CSS.
• Dave Goes Microsoft - I got a new job.
• A common web component learning blunder - Web component libraries are okay to use and people might be doing themselves a disservice by not using them.

📺 Media

I started watching movies again. I don’t know what got into me but I’m finding enjoyment in watching movies right now. It might take me three days and countless interruptions to finish a movie, but there’s good stories in there.

Movies

• Furiosa (2024) - Disappointed after seeing this in the theater. I understand the movie a bit more now as a fusion between the old hokey grindhouse Mad Max and the new grittier, jaw-dropping cinematic Fury Road. But even given that concession, it felt disjointed like two directors made it.
• RRR (2022) - Long overdue. A slow warm for me, I didn’t lock in until later in the third act. But it’s a phenomenal, over-the-top film with a bit of welcome anti-Imperialist messaging mixed in.
• Black Hole (1979) - Saw a shitty sci-fi movie in my recommendations, watched that shitty sci-fi movie. It’s as if someone saw Star Wars’ success and Disney said, “We have R2-D2 at home.” Then decided they could make a cooler R2-D2 by making him talk. Weirdly though, I enjoyed it.
• Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) - Taika Waititi can do no wrong. A bizarre coming of age story, but charming nonetheless.
• Tokyo Godfathers (2003) - What happens when three homeless people; a young girl, a drunk, and a drag queen find an abandoned baby on Christmas? This is like The Pogues’ Fairytale of New York in anime form and I’ll watch it over and over and reach for at the holidays.
• Inside Out 2 (2024) - A worthy sequel a blockbuster movie on mental health. Anxiety steals the show and is super relatable.
• Godzilla Minus One (2023) - I heard this was good and they were wrong… it’s great! A perfect Godzilla movie for me.
• Starship Troopers (1997) - Clearing out my list of shame, I watched Starship Troopers. An interesting piece of satire to say the least, yet the characters and plot move you along. No wonder it’s a classic.

YouTube

• I don’t know James Wolfe by Folding Ideas – A hypnotizing analysis of a YouTube star, a callback to an arthouse film, and now I see nerdrage all over the internet, following me around like a haunted doll.

TV

• Lego Masters S4 (Hulu) - Something the whole family will watch and enjoy.

Anime

• Delicious in Dungeon (Netflix) - Stuck in a rut on this, but will finish.

🎙 Recording

We’ve been doing a little micro-series on ShopTalk about niche app builders. People who build bespoke apps and try to turn it into a business. The feedback has been good and I enjoy peeking into how others are making their dreams happen.

Niche app builders series

• 616: Strum Machine with Luke Abbott
• 618: Matt Visiwig on SVGBackgrounds
• 619: Svencodes

Other fantastic guests

• 614: CSS Grid Level 3 aka Masonry with Adam Argyle
• 615: Dave Goes Windows For Real
• 617: Economic & AI Vibes with Jason Grigsby

🤖 Gunpla & Plamo

I started on my Perfect Grade Unleashed RX-78-2 and I’m half-way finished. It’s a fantastic model. I also picked up a new Mini 4WD car… which I’ll post more about later.

⌨️ Open source

A couple CodePen web components, nothing officially open sourced. I tend to get productive in the summer and have an uptick in productivity and crash in August.

• debug-formdata - Debugging the FormData object with web components and elementInternals is a pain. This help that.
• aria-debugger - Scanning for changes in accessibility related props and attributes on a group of elements is a small nightmare, this is a proof of concept to make that easier. I think I need to make walk the DOM tree a bit deeper (three levels deep?) and add shadow DOM support. Sounds like work tho.

👾 Video games

I’m struggling with the fact that staying up past my bedtime to play video games is bad for my health. I need to figure out a better way to game.

• There was a Gundam cross-over event in Call of Duty: Warzone, so I broke my rule about never paying money for cosmetics. I look cool in the video game now and it only cost me $20/ea.
• Got back into The Finals. Looking at the landscape, probably my favorite co-op shooter.